We store some toilet paper in a shelf at the rear of our bathroom, we thought one or two had disappeared. But we couldn’t find them anywhere, and it wasn’t exactly a major crisis.

Fate likes to visit each of the wastebaskets in the farmhouse every day and empty the contents on the floor, where she thinks they should be. So I suspected  her. We have been playing border collie chess for some time, moving the baskets, lifting them up, closing and locking doors. Fate is mischievous and wily, she noses open doors, waits for us to forget, chews things out of sight. I found bits of chewed up toilet paper here and there, but no toilet paper, and I could not catch her in the act.

She never does this stuff when we are looking.

Fate stashes stuff all over the house, rawhide, bones, under chairs and behind cabinets. I was reading in the living room yesterday and Maria was out and I forget her, it was quiet. That made me suspicious,  and I got up and tiptoed into my study.  Busted. She was lying on the floor, quietly chewing on one roll – the one on the right and when I leaned over to pick it up, the other one, the one on the left, was visible under the sofa in my office, where the pirate dog had stashed it.

We have moved the toilet paper to a higher shelf. Fate is a she-devil as well as a pirate. She put on her “who-me?” look.